


Estimation

by nanila



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Food Issues, Friends to Lovers, Mad Scientists, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanila/pseuds/nanila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astrid and Peter discover they have more in common than Walter Bishop and Olivia Dunham. In particular, a desire for whisky and sexytiems. Written post-Series 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Estimation

**Author's Note:**

> Written after having viewed only Series 1 of Fringe.

He's asked Olivia to go out for a drink, slipping the request casually into a late-night conversation in the lab, for about the fiftieth time. For the fiftieth time, she's said no. In fact, the only time she said yes was when it was her idea in the first place. And, he remembers, part of a job. He's pondering these truths when a voice pipes up.

"I'll go. I could use a drink.”

Peter wheels around to look up at Astrid, standing by her desk with her coat in her hand. He’s so genuinely surprised that his carefully cultivated cynical cool fails him. “Uh...right! Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what about Walter?”

“Walter’s doing a trial on Jean’s milk. He’s seeing if he can actually watch it curdle. I told him to use a video camera but he’s convinced it will miss something. Apparently 24 frames a second isn’t enough.”

Peter cranes his neck to peer into Jean’s corner. Walter sits hunched on the milking stool, staring intently at a 250 mL beaker.

“He’s been there for seven hours already.”

“How--”

“Amphetamines. On a drip.”

Peter sighs. “Right. Let’s go.”

Astrid puts on her coat. “I’ll take you somewhere new,” she says, pushing through the outer doors.

“Hey, hey, there’s nowhere in Boston I haven’t been,” he replies confidently, as they step out into the crisp night air.

She raises an eyebrow. “221b Baker Street.”

“Shit. What is that?”

“Jazz club. They have a special rule for the shows.”

“Which is?”

“No talking while there’s a single note of music to be heard.”

“Right. So can we go somewhere we can talk afterward?”

Astrid shoves his shoulder. “There’s no show on tonight. It’ll be fine. Besides, they have a really good whisky selection.”

“Wait, you drink whisky too?”

“How do you think I got this job?”

Peter stares at her. “No way. You’re not telling me you got this job by outdrinking Agent Olivia Dunham.”

Astrid smiles. “I’ll tell you the story sometime. Taxi!”

~*~

They’ve sampled a few scotches and a bourbon, and Peter is feeling decidedly mellow. He picks up the glass Astrid sets in front of him and swirls the liquid around inside it, admiring the rich tawny colour in the dim lamplight.

“Elijah Craig. It’s one of my favourites,” says Astrid.

Peter sips. “Beautiful,” he agrees, and he’s tipsy enough to give her a meaningful quirk of the eyebrows over the rim of his glass. She doesn’t appear to notice.

“Hey, Astrid. Do you think people underestimate you?”

“Of course. Always. I rely on it.”

“How did you, you know. Get used to it?”

“It’s been happening my whole life. I’ve always been too small or too female or too quiet. Sometimes even too black.”

Peter has never been made so conscious of his masculinity. Or his whiteness. He shifts uncomfortably in the booth. “People do that to you?”

She laughs. “Not as much any more. I spend so much time with people who wouldn’t give a shit if I were purple as long as I get the job done that I forget sometimes it ever does.”

“I guess I just thought...stuff like that didn’t happen any more. Not in, you know. Places like this. Well, not like this.” He gestures around the bar. “Where we work. You know what I mean.”

She nods. “Most white guys do. But with you having that genius IQ, I thought you might have considered it some time. Maybe I overestimated you, hey?”

Astrid puts up her hand to shove his shoulder again and he captures it quickly with his own.

“Being underestimated can be useful,” he says, looking down. “If you know how to be quiet--”

“--people listen harder when you speak,” she finishes.

“Like my father, when he gives you orders. He expects you’ll follow them without question, because he thinks he’s smarter than you. So when you don’t--”

“--he takes me seriously. I know. It’s not guaranteed to change his mind, unfortunately.” Astrid leans forward. “So what do you think?”

“About what?”

“Do you think he’s smarter than me?”

Peter looks her in the face. “I think...If Walter Bishop were in full possession of his faculties, he would be the smartest human being on the planet. Smarter than William Bell. Since he’s not, I’m going to have to pass on the question, because the answer depends on the position of Jupiter in the night sky or the availability of coffee ice cream or whether he needs to pee.”

Astrid is laughing before he gets to the end of his speech. He takes advantage of her relaxed guard to bring her fingers to his lips. She stops laughing.

“Peter--”

“Astrid, I don’t want you to think I’m doing this because Olivia wouldn’t come. I mean, it started out like that but I’ve been watching you for a while. We’ve spent so much time together in the lab and the way you handle my father is amazing and you have the most gorgeous eyes--”

“Peter!”

“What?”

“Shut up!”

He subsides, open-mouthed.

Astrid finishes her whisky and stands up. “We’re going outside and getting a taxi now. We’re going to my place for exactly four hours. At the end of that time, it will be seven AM and Walter will kill us if we don’t return to the lab with pancakes. So. Are you ready, or do you want to sit there flapping your mouth at me all night?”

~*~

Peter props himself on his elbow to watch Astrid’s face. He has, he decides, not spent nearly enough time doing this, an oversight he plans to rectify in the future. He shifts his gaze to her slim hands, lying folded on her chest. He knows her hands better because of all the times he’s leaned over her shoulder while they flew over a keyboard, flipped rapidly through a file folder or pipetted some toxic concoction of Walter’s into a test tube.

“Peter,” Astrid says, without opening her eyes.

“Hmmm?”

“Why are you so quiet? And why are you looking at my hands?”

He works his fingers into a clasp with hers. “I’m quiet because you’ve discovered one of the only known ways to shut me up.”

“Which is?”

“Mind-blowing sex.”

Astrid opens her eyes, turning her head to smile at him. “Guess I’ll have to discover some more. We can’t be doing that in the lab. Walter would object.”

The possibility that Walter wouldn’t object crosses their minds simultaneously. The probability that Walter would attempt to videotape such an event with commentary occurs to Peter but not, he hopes fervently, to Astrid. He breaks that train of thought by using his free hand to hit her on the head with a pillow.

“Hey!”

“Why do you have so many pillows? I pegged you as a Spartan kind of girl.”

Astrid shakes her head. “Uh uh. Not until you answer my second question.”

“I’m looking at your hands because I’m not used to seeing them without a protective layer of nitrile glove. How did you know I was looking at your hands? You had your eyes closed.”

“By asking another question, you forfeit your right to an answer to the first.”

“_You_ asked two questions at once.”

“Yeah, but it’s _my_ bed. My rules.”

Before Peter can reply to this outrageous assertion, Astrid nails him smartly on the head with a pillow kicked up from the end of the bed. The discussion comes to a halt in a flurry of retributive attacks.

~*~

Astrid and Peter enter the lab together, carrying a load of paper bags. “Breakfast!” Astrid calls cheerily to Walter, who is bathing his face and slurping noisily from his hands in a sink marked with a sign. In large red letters, it says, “Not Drinking Water”.

Walter looks up, dripping, and crinkles into a smile. “Excellent, Agent Farnsworth!”

“Pancakes,” she informs him as he dries his hands on his lab coat. “And before you ask, yes, they’re from McDonalds and I remembered both the maple syrup and those honey packets they normally give you with the Chicken McNuggets.”

Walter dives eagerly into the bag.

“Good night?” she asks.

“Yes, yes,” he replies. “I managed to observe the turning point of the milk. I have a hypothesis about this.”

“Care to share?” Peter drawls laconically, around a mouthful of Egg McMuffin.

“No,” Walter replies.

Peter rolls his eyes. “Why not?”

“Because it might be bullshit, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Come on, son, you know the scientific method. It was a single trial! I can’t draw a valid conclusion from a single trial. There must be more, many more.”

Peter buries his face in his hands and groans.

“In fact, if you aren’t busy tonight, you could help. Agent Farnsworth, you too. Are you busy tonight?” Walter looks anxiously from one to the other. A light of perception dawns in his eyes.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh!”

Peter and Astrid look at the floor, identical flushes crawling up their cheeks.

Walter smiles beatifically. “Never mind. I’m sure Jean and I can manage fine on our own. Right, Jean?”

The cow regards them all with her soft brown eyes before letting out a low, soulful moo.

“That’s right, dear girl,” says Walter, returning to his pancake preparation and tucking his napkin into his collar with a flourish.

Everyone chews their breakfast quietly for a while. Astrid begins looking through a case file as she sips her orange juice. Peter looks over her shoulder at it and is about to make an observation when the silence is broken.

“Peter,” says Walter, scraping the last fragments of pancake and maple syrup/honey mix together into a pile at the center of his styrofoam container.

“Would you mind if I examined you? Just the usual, blood pressure, pulse rate, pupil dilation, skin--”

“No!” roars Peter abruptly. Astrid blinks at him, startled.

“It’s all right, son, I don’t want to give you anything, just to see how you are.”

“I know why you want to do it,” growls Peter.

“I’m worried about you. The tendency toward hypertension might have been mitigated by last night’s activities--”

“Not another word, Walter.”

“Last night’s activities--”

“Walter!”

“You can examine me if you like,” Astrid breaks in.

“What?” snaps Peter.

“What?” asks Walter.

“Examine me,” she says. “Walter’s curious about the effects of last night’s ‘activities’ on a person’s physical and mental well-being, aren’t you, Walter?”

He nods. “Yes, Agent Farnsworth, yes.”

“You were only trying to justify it with concern for your son so he wouldn’t get too upset. Except that sorta backfired.”

“Yeah it did,” Peter snarls.

Astrid gives him a quelling look. “So examine me. Problem solved. Right, Doctor Bishop?”

“Very good. Very good. Thank you, Agent Farnsworth.”

Astrid walks down the steps and perches herself on Walter’s examination table. “Peter, would you mind writing down whatever it was you were going to say about that case? I think Olivia will find it really useful when she comes in.”

“What? Yeah, sure.”

Peter sits down at her desk and begins to shuffle papers around, looking for a pen.

“Top righthand drawer,” Astrid calls to him.

He finds her favourite Parker and starts writing, quickly becoming absorbed in it. Astrid breathes deeply as Walter bustles around her, pancake remnants forgotten, assembling equipment and humming tunelessly. This, she thinks, is going to be way easier than she’d imagined.


End file.
